"It is always so," said Jack, impatiently; "if we don't want wild
beasts, there are shoals of them to be seen; but if we do want them,
then they are all off to their dens."
"Perhaps, there are none now," suggested Willis.
"Say rather," observed Fritz, "that there ought to be thousands; for
on the one hand they multiply rapidly, and on the other there is no
one to destroy them. Spaniards once left a few cattle on St. Domingo,
and they increased at such a rate, that the island very soon would not
have been able to support them, had they not been kept down by
constant slaughter."
"Besides," remarked Jack, "the bovine race reproduce themselves more
slowly than other animals; a single sow, according to a calculation
made by Vauban, if allowed to live eleven years, would produce six
millions of pigs."
"What a cargo of legs of pork and sides of bacon!" exclaimed Willis,
laughing.
"Then fish; there are more than a hundred and sixty thousand eggs in a
single carp. A sturgeon contains a million four hundred and
sixty-seven thousand eight hundred and fifty, whilst in some codfish
the number exceeds nine millions."
"Oh, you need not favor us with the 'Mariner's March,' Willis; what my
brother says is perfectly correct."
"What, then, do these shoals of creatures live upon?"
"The big ones upon the little ones; fish devour each other.
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